Marine-Snapshots - underwater and topside photography

It’s the mystery, magic, beauty and abundance of life that draws us to the ocean, but capturing the wonders of the underwater world in a photograph can be excruciatingly difficult

First of all, electronic cameras and water are not best friends and the smallest leak in an underwater housing instantly transforms an expensive camera into a white elephant. Second, light does not pass easily through water, and this means that almost all underwater photographs are taken within touching-distance of the subject. So there’s the challenge of getting so close to subjects. And finally, as humans we cannot stay underwater indefinitely, and therefore underwater photography is always done under time pressure.

It’s not often that you get to see the world in a totally new way. So my first dive to view fluorescence in underwater creatures was really mind-blowing.

Fluorescence is a truly magical effect: It transforms light from one wavelength to another and it will also transform your dive. Experienced divers appreciate fluorescence the most. Just when you start to think you really know your dive site and have seen it all, you can make it totally new again.

It is the process in which electromagnetic radiation (light) of one wavelength (color) is absorbed and light of another wavelength is emitted. Most of us have seen this on land with ultraviolet (or “black”) light.

Fluorescence is commonly confused with bioluminescence, the simple difference being that bioluminescence refers to light generated from within the organism, while fluorescence requires an external stimulus, in this case light.

Have you had a situation before, where you stood on top of a mountain or some sort of outlook and enjoyed a beautiful view that seemed to span from far left to far right, making you move your head just to see everything? If you have had one of those moments, I am sure you really wished that you could capture the beauty with your digital camera. The technology today allows us to capture such scenes through a panoramic photography technique.

Panoramic photography, also known as wide format photography, is a special technique that stitches multiple images from the same camera together to form a single, wide photograph.

In simple terms, a panorama represents mostly a 360 horizontal and 180 degrees vertical field of view. In other words, it is a panorama that reflects the entire field of view around you.